IntelliShare 2: Sharing Family Files | Legacy Family Tree

OK. We’ve started with Legacy’s IntelliShare. With the file-name MasterFile. We could have named it anything.

We decided my family file should be the starting point because my file is the one with the MRINs already defined to follow the MRIN Filing System. It’s already linked to source documents, thousands of source citations and the portraits. My cousin already files her paper by marriages so we’re close to having the same system, hers just lacking the numbers right now.

We’re related through our fathers’ fathers. So, I made a copy of my main ANCESTORS file, then unlinked my mother’s line and my father’s mother’s line and found the floaters through TreeFinder. Then I tagged and deleted all of them and purged the Master Lists using File Maintenance. That left 6,635 shared relatives, 846 Master Sources, 1,500 linked source documents and 200 portraits. Which is nothing really. She has most of it in un-scanned boxes. But that’s another story.

My cousin linked up the SOURCES and Portraits folders (sent to her through our shared Dropbox folder) by using Options/Customize/Locations/View Current List of Multimedia Locations and adding the file-paths. Of course, I’ve also sent her the MasterFile.

Her job now is to start merging people from her main file into the MasterFile. Not too many at once and then she’ll send a copy of the MasterFile back to me for merging. As I’ve done she’ll also keep her mother’s line and father’s mother’s line out of it.

Since we plan to do this slowly we’ll have time to discuss our differences as we go along and for her to share source documents that I may be missing. We agree that merging her 7,500 people at one time would be too much. (Change of plan: See IntelliShare 5)

The next step is next week but this is what I’m expecting. When I get the file back from her with her changes I’ll import it into my copy of the MasterFile, then go to Merge/Find Duplicates and the Special Duplicate Searches tab and click on the IntelliShare option. What this should do is scan our two files, automatically merge what’s identical and only present for merging what’s been changed in her file. I’ll do the merge, noting any areas for discussion. Then I’ll send her a copy back.

If I’ve made any changes to my file in the meantime, she gets them back in the new MasterFile.

Then we’ll carry on again until she’s ready to send me another changed file. We’ve got a plan.